INTERVIEW: DANCES WITH WHITE GIRLS

TALKING HIGH-END NON-ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES, ALSO KNOWN AS SILLY SIPS

I know this is a music blog. I mean, it’s in the damn name. Today, though? Today we are talking about silly sips. 

The Los Angeles-based artist, producer and DJ Dances With White Girls has been a presence in multiple music communities for well over a decade. Many would call him a legend. But I’m not here to talk to him about his discography or his time as an NYC afterhours hero or his frenzied Twitter presence or his guest feature on the 2014 EDM hit “Ass Hypnotised” by TJR or his brush with death and Herculean recovery after getting hit by a drunk driver. Again… I’m here to talk to him about silly sips.

What are silly sips? The inspired term was coined by Dances and refers to a space in the non-alcoholic beverage market that should be familiar to many at this point. Silly sips are mostly carbonated drinks with fancy ingredients and “complex” flavor profiles. Silly sips are often loaded with “adaptogens,” whatever that fuck that means. Silly sips can be branded any number of ways, but usually have a mildly embarrassing graphic design element that differentiates the beverages from more “low-end” fare. Silly sips are almost always kind of expensive. 

Dances seems to be constantly reviewing these things on his Instagram, so I thought it would be nice to go deeper. On my music blog.

So, what are you sippin’ on today?

It’s just a normal drink, it’s a “Nojito” Spindrift.

That’s a new flavor.

Yeah, it’s a new flavor. I just reviewed it. 

How’s it hitting compared to the rest of the product line?

I don’t really like this. It’s the worst Spindrift I’ve had, because it really feels like alcohol. I don’t really want a lime, mint sparkling water. I said what would be cool would be a blueberry mojito, that would be a cool vibe. I don’t want to drink, and I feel like this would be good for mixing. 

That’s interesting, because it seems like there’s all these beverages now that are sort of, like, approximations of alcoholic drinks. You don’t fuck with those?

No, I like those. I like those if they’re good, because some of them basically just taste like you’re drinking kombucha. I like the bitter, I like them, they’re cool to try, some of them do feel like a “complex” drink, which I do like in general, even if it’s not a cocktail. I’m not really looking for the alcohol flavor, but the thing is, sometimes they become too much, like, trying to give an essence of alcohol. There’s a flavor profile mixing, it’s not like it’s alcohol necessarily per se, but it’s something in the drink. 

I think there’s a full store in Brooklyn now that just sells non-alcoholic, alcoholic drinks.

There’s a few, but there’s a chain that’s in New York and in LA. I’ve been to the thing out here.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah, there’s one chain. I loved it. I was like, Oh this is great. I spent like 90-100 dollars on silly sips. I was stoked.

You ever try the dealcoholized wine?

I’ve had that numerous times. I’ve been drinking the non-alcoholic drinks for the past few years. I just stopped drinking like a year ago–it will be a year in two weeks I think, I stopped after Coachella–but I was barely drinking before. And non-alcoholic wines are OK, but they really have to be good. Sometimes it’s like, man, just give me a cool grape juice or something.

For sure. The one time I had it, it just kind of tasted like grape juice to me.

Yeah.

Alright. Where does the term “silly sip” originate? Did you create this term?

I came up with it, I was always drinking these things. I did see a TikTok, where this girl did this whole thing, this black girl, like months before: “Sometimes I like to go to the grocery store, just have myself a nice little girlie drink or something or like that.” I liked that, I was like, this is totally me, you know? And I just called it silly sips. But that’s all, I didn’t really come from any place. 

It’s such a good term. It’s not a new beverage space, but it's constantly expanding. It’s just so silly. I haven’t drank in a long time and it’s funny to be going to a grocery store or something and paying seven dollars for some bullshit. But, it’s like, what else do we got?

I know, what else do we got. And the thing is, I was always buying these things. My silly sip journey, I always like to say, probably started when I was a kid drinking, did you ever drink Clearly Canadian? You’re from the Midwest.

Yeah.

Clearly Candian’s out by you, right? So, Clearly Canadian is definitely what got me on my journey, basically. When I was a kid in Philly, if I could make beats all day and afford–Clearly Canadian was so rich for me as a child, but it’s so cheap now–but if I could drink sparkling beverages and make music, that made me happy. 

Growing up, we had a lot of LaCroix. I was always bummed out when my parents got LaCroix, because it was so close to soda, but it just wasn’t. It took me a long time to appreciate seltzer.

It’s crazy because you’re from, obviously you’re from the Midwest, so the LaCroix’s been around you, but was that weird for you, personally… It became very hip a few years ago.

I remember when LaCroix started to mean something different in culture. And now, am I wrong, has LaCroix kind of fallen off?

If I see a LaCroix, I’m like, OK, cool, this is a LaCroix, but I never drink… LaCroix is just a water that’s around, it’s there because it’s a standard, but I’m not ever, like, stoked. LaCroix has no cache and I’m not stoked for it, you know? There are so many options.

You know the people who make LaCroix also make Faygo?

Yeah, yeah I know. 

That’s such a crazy connection. Between those two beverages it’s kind of like the blue state/red state divide.

I know, you got Insane Clown Posse people, then people like Gwyneth Paltrow, those are the two different worlds. Not that Gwyneth Paltrow would ever drink LaCroix. 

She might’ve at some point. But who knows now. She’s drinking beverages that we don’t have access to.

I know, yeah. Crazy water.

She has her own seltzer setup at home with her own personal…

Sommelier.

Yeah. 

There’s a water sommelier, you know that?

Yeah, there’s this German water snob TikTok guy, he kind of looks like a middle-aged techno DJ and he’s always talking shit about Smartwater. 

Oh yeah, Smartwater’s disgusting.

What do you like in a silly sip? It’s such a wide category, but is there a balance you want between sweet, bitter, fruit…

I like different things for different reasons, you know? For a silly sip that I’m excited about, I want an interesting, maybe sweet flavor with a little bit of an exotic thing to it. And then, I don’t always like it, but I kind of like it because I’m a ‘90s kid and I love a scam, I love a fake health aspect. They put this in lots of the fake alcohol drinks, but they do it in everything. I don’t need CBD or anything like that, but if there’s an adaptogen or anything weird in it, I’m like, Oh yeah, let me get that. I don’t take vitamins, you know, at this point, I’m old, I should be taking vitamins. I’ll just get it through the water. That’s where I’m at. 

And it needs to have a strong flavor, if it’s just like… This Spindrift is a very bad mix, because the flavor’s too strong but I don’t like it. Spindrift I don’t consider a silly sip, to me it’s just a normal drink that’s a flavored water. It’s like a LaCroix. I would never really review LaCroix. I reviewed this Spindrift because I had it and it was new–I don’t really do that, it’s not the silly sip thing. But, yeah, it needs a strong flavor. If it’s too much like a seltzer water, I’m good on it. If it feels too much like a soda, if it’s too sweet… I like a grown-up soda–not the brand, but you know what I mean–but I know automatically when it’s a soda, and I’m not necessarily looking for that, you know what I mean? I’m not trying to replace soda in my life, I’m not trying to replace anything in my life, I just like the silly sip. 

I think maybe what defines these things is a quote-un-quote “complex flavor profile” of some sort?

Yes. Yes. 

What are your favorite silly sips, and what are your least favorite? 

Tepache is my favorite, they do a whole thing, they’re great. I love Recess, it’s a CBD drink, but it’s great, they have a margarita version, which is amazing. It’s so good that when they had it at a bar in Brooklyn they couldn’t keep it on the shelf–people who drank were putting tequila in it because it was that good. Chiki Chiki Boom Boom, also, is another thing that I like. It’s not carbonated though, it’s more like a juice drink. 

Going back, what the fuck are adaptogens? I buy these drinks too, and they list this shit, I have no clue what any of this stuff is supposed to do to me.

I think they’re basically like nootropics, basically. Nootropic, vitamin-adjacent, I want to say.

It’s just a scam.

Yeah, it’s a scam. I love a scam. You can sign me up for a scam. I’m the person, not all of the time, but I’ll pay extra for the truffle mayo, you know? I know it’s just oil, I know it’s a scam, I might not even like the flavor, but I like a scam. That’s just me. 

As somebody who can justify buying this stuff by saying that I don’t spend money on alcohol, I like to commit to the bit and be like, Yes I’m paying eight dollars for whatever this is… You’re in the club a fair amount. You see silly sips making it into that space?

There are a few spaces. The last time I bought one in a club was a month ago, I remember it. It will be places that tend to be really new and really patron-focused, or maybe sort of the bigger restaurant groups will have it. People who are really active in culture. Other places, it’s a 50/50. It’s coming around, but it’s not as prevalent as I would like. 

Bar mocktails, that’s a different category than silly sips.

Yeah. You know, I love mocktails, though. I was getting mocktails when I was drinking the past couple years. I wasn’t drinking heavily, but I was drinking still. I would be like, Oh let me get a mocktail. I maybe would have not had a drink in general, because I was drinking less, but it was also, more, like, this is a cool flavor thing. I’m friends with people in the cocktail world, I was living the stupid Brooklyn hipster life at one time. So I’ve had, at this point, every cocktail.  I’ve had them and I don’t need, necessarily, new flavors. If it’s another margarita of some type, it’s not going to be interesting to me. But, yeah let me see what your mocktail is.

It’s also cool, because they make me feel childish. A mocktail is so childish. Some of them are really good, and some of them really feel like, oh this is a drink that you give to a kid at the table who wants to have a beverage. I kind of like that, though. I kind of like that. OK, cool, this is silly. I’m down for it. Yeah, treat me like I’m a little child who wants to feel like his parents. I like that, I like that. 

Dances With White Girls on Twitter and Instagram